Dan Calabrese: Why aren’t details of how Palin governed news?

These are the same people who tell us Gov. Palin is stupid.
*
Noting that the corrupt media was only interested in emails
from Sarah Palin's past, and not those of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or any of the current crop of announced GOP presidential hopefuls, Dan Calabrese condemns the lamestreamers' "search-and-destroy mission" to find dirt on her, "and only her":

All the headlines offered by the egg-on-face media tell us that the e-mails were full of mundane, day-to-day governing stuff, but held no bombshells or major embarrassments.

Now, what does that tell us about what they consider to be news?

You’ve got 24,900 e-mails, many of which contain Palin’s correspondence in the course of governing her state. That’s not news. But if she said something idiotic, shallow or religious, that would be news?

Presumably the reason the media cared about the e-mails at all was that Palin might run for president, or at least they think she might. So why not give us a series of stories on the policies Palin implemented in Alaska? Wouldn’t that give us a lot of valuable insight about the kind of president she might be, if she decided to run? What could possibly be more relevant than that?

Oh. Right. Gaffes, bombshells and slip-ups. Certainly not the substantive details of how she governed.

This sorry exercise tells us more about the media than it does about Palin, although it appears the e-mails demonstrate a fair amount about Palin being engaged in the day-to-day details about governing, serious about budget-cutting and on top of the state’s operations.

[More]

What it tells us about the media, Calabrese points out, helps explain Monday night's circus disguised as a presidential “debate” and the stupid CNN questions “Elvis or Johnny Cash?” What was that all about? the explanation for such nonsense, says Calabrese, is that beyond the horse-race details of elections, today's media have no clue to how to cover the serious business of the governing of the nation. So the trivial and idiotic questions of candidates allow the media Obamabots to coast, as it doesn’t obligate them to investigate how these candidates would rise to the challenge of doing the job they are competing for.

"And these are the same people who tell us Palin is stupid," remarks Calabrese. Indeed, she was smart enough not to let herself be drawn into this particular sideshow, which we figure makes her smarter than anyone who was asking or answering the questions at this so-called "debate."

- JP

Quote of the Day (June 7, 2011)

Palin's right about Paul Revere
*
Dan Calabrese at The Detroit News Blogs:

“The problem here is not with Palin. It's with the media, who apparently know nothing of Paul Revere's ride apart from what was said in Longfellow's famous poem. This is similar to when Palin told tea party activists to "party like it's 1773," and the media - knowing nothing of the Boston Tea Party - ripped her on the baseless assumption that Palin must have been talking about the signing of the Declaration of Independence... Meanwhile, how much more debt has the federal government incurred during the days we've all been talking about what the media said about what Sarah Palin said about what Paul Revere said to the British?”

- JP

Quote of the Day (December 21, 2010)

*
Dan Calabrese at North Star National:

"I’ll side with Sarah Palin... and her reality-based notion of the real stakes on the issue of geopolitical influence and nuclear proliferation, as evidenced by her thoughtful piece today in USA Today on the threat posed by Iran. Palin is a bright, knowledgeable source of information and insight on foreign policy. Anyone who doesn’t think so should become more familiar with her actual thinking, not just the pop culture notions about her."

- JP

Refudiating Ed Rollins

Sarah knows the issues, Mr. Rollins. Read her op-eds and get a clue.
*
Mike Huckabee's 2008 campaign manager Ed Rollins launched a vicious attack today on Gov. Palin in a hit piece posted on CNN's website. Dan Calabrese calls him out for his disingenuous smear job:

There is much to mock about a piece on Gov. Palin’s supposed lack of presidential qualifications, especially coming from a man who once tried to help win the presidency for H. Ross Perot, who was not only unqualified but also insane.

But the one that deserves to be exploded is one of the most oft-repeated, condescending slams on Palin. It certainly does not represent any original thinking on Rollins’s part, as it’s been expressed many times by the likes of George Will and just about every D.C.-based political consultant. It is this:

“If you want to be a player, go to school and learn the issues.”

Bulls___, Mr. Rollins. Bulls___.

The notion that Sarah Palin isn’t up to speed on the issues is one of the most groundless ideas on the political landscape today. Take your pick where it comes from: The stupid Charlie Gibson “Bush Doctrine” question? (In which Gibson demonstrated he doesn’t know anything about the Bush Doctrine.) The media’s full-court coverup of Palin’s truthfulness in talking about death panels? People’s confusion between Tina Fey’s caricature and the genuine article?

Whatever the source, it only goes to prove that lots of people believing something doesn’t make it true.

Spend some time on Palin’s Facebook page, where she regularly holds forth on the issues. See what she has to say about tax policy, the WikiLeaks fiasco, monetary policy, energy policy, Iraq and the crucial priorities facing the incoming GOP Congress.

And that’s just the most recent. Palin regularly uses her Facebook platform to deliver her thoughts on leading issues of the day to nearly 2.5 million fans who receive her posts in their newsfeeds. So she not only knows the issues and expounds on them with eloquence, she is smart enough to go directly to the public with her message, bypassing the idiotic legacy media in the process.

[More]

Another well-documented refudiation of Rollins' politically-motivated anti-Palin barrage was published today by Whitney Pitcher on Conservatives 4 Palin. Give it a read.

- JP

Dan Calabrese: AP = All Propaganda

*
Dan Calabrese notes that incumbent U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina's 4th congressional district was destroyed (by a whopping 42 percentage points) in the GOP primary this year by local prosecutor Trey Gowdy. Incredibly, the Associated Press blames Sarah Palin, even though she never endorsed any candidate in that race:

Now, many people can tell you why Inglis lost, although none of them work for the AP. Inglis lost because America finds itself in a precarious fiscal situation and needs to elect people with certain qualities in order to fix that situation – and Inglis does not possess these qualities. America is careening toward fiscal insolvency because of Congress’s refusal to get federal spending under control. Solving the problem means electing people who will reform entitlements, reject pork-barrel politics and stop trying to kick the can down the road so the next generation of Americans can deal with the problem.

[...]

So in an attempt to explain all this, the AP highlights what it sees as Inglis’s brave, high-minded denunciations of Glenn Beck, whom he labels a divisive fearmonger. But that is just an entry point for the AP to take a shot at one of its favorite targets – Sarah Palin.

Now, let’s back up for a second. You will recall that Palin denounced the ObamaCare socialized medicine bill for the fact that it will likely lead to “death panels,” a description that refers to committees of “experts” who will make decisions about who gets life-saving treatment and who doesn’t – largely based on what it will cost the government.

You will also recall that the major media, particularly the AP, screamed long and loud to anyone who would listen that there are no death panels in the bill. The media made this insistence so many times that the left-wing propaganda group MediaMatters declared Palin’s statement “debunked” based on the fact that the media said so many, many times, which qualifies as evidence of truth in the twisted world of MediaMatters.

What you may not recall is, as documented in this column and elsewhere, the bill (now a law) absolutely does contain the panel to which Palin refers. It is called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, and it is so important to the supporters of ObamaCare that Harry Reid added a stipulation that it cannot be eliminated without a two-thirds majority vote of both houses of Congress.

But the AP has, for nearly a year, treated Palin’s death panel comment as an established falsehood. So the AP now sees Inglis as the tragic victim of his own courageous honesty because he, too, bought the AP’s propaganda.

[...]

Poor Bob. He lost the seat to which he had a divine right because he wouldn’t join in the horrible demagoguery practiced by Sarah Palin, and now that his career as a congressman-for-life has been cut tragically short, the AP must run to him for an explanation of all that has gone wrong in American politics.

Because people who lose primaries for their own seats by 42 points are usually the smartest people in the room, don’t you know?

Dan Calabrese has much more to say on this at North Star National.

h/t: roy y

- JP

Dan Calabrese: Sarah Palin isn’t going to be what you demand her to be

*
In our opinion, an excellent opinion piece by Dan Calabrese of the North Star National Monday:

Sarah Palin has never signed an I-must statement promising to do everything that a given constituency wants her to do. She has never promised to abide by the list of requirements that will make her a so-called real conservative.

Sometimes her supporters will agree with her. Sometimes they won’t. I wasn’t thrilled when she endorsed the son of Ron Paul in Kentucky, but I don’t feel the need to believe in a Sarah Palin who is perfectly molded to fit my ideal of who and what she is supposed to be.

Just as Barack Obama isn’t necessarily what you imagine him to be, Sarah Palin isn’t going to be what you demand her to be. She is who she is – a very smart, skilled public servant and political figure who thinks for herself and makes her own decisions.

If these decisions sometimes don’t comport to the strategy you think she should be following to achieve the objective you’re sure she’s obsessed with, check to see if maybe you’re the one with the obsession.

And if they sometimes don’t fit with the orthodoxy of your particular movement, and that makes you want to have a hissy fit, too damn bad.

As Calabrese cites in his op-ed, Sarah Palin's support for McCain and endorsement of Rand Paul angered some of her fair weather backers to the point where they declared that they "could no longer support her."

Every blogger whose website displays the Blogs 4 Palin blogroll on his or her website agrees to the principles stated on the Blogs 4 Palin home page. The key concept is stated there as:

"Blogs 4 Palin is a blog community whose members support the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate in whatever she decides to do in 2010 and beyond."

The words "whatever she decides to do" mean exactly what they say. We support Sarah Palin regardless of whom she endorses or campaigns for. We support her whether she decides to run for the Senate or White House, in whatever year she decides to do it, or even if she decides not to run for public office again.

We support her for a number of reasons not limited to her positions on the issues. We like the fact that she connects with everyday people and is not a D.C. insider, but it is more than that. We appreciate her candor and are impressed by her record as a reformer. We admire her courage and her determination. We share her faith in God and her respect for innocent human life. We are inspired by her commitment to her family and her practice of what she preaches concerning those among us who have special needs. But for many of us the single most important reason we support Sarah Palin is that she is a fighter. She doesn't back down, no matter how viciously her enemies attack her nor how often they do it. If only there were more in the Republican Party with that spirit.

This is why we see Sarah Palin as the only one in the Republican Party who has the determination and the ability to reform it. She will drag the GOP back to its Reagan ways even if the cost to do it is her political future. As she said, paraphrasing scripture, "If I die, I die."

- JP

Sarah Palin Was Right #23: Dan Calabrese on Death Panels

*
Posting at The North Star National, Dan Calabrese says not only was Sarah Palin right about the death panels, but Harry Reid is attempting to make them permanent:

It’s no cause for celebration, and Sarah Palin’s not the type for schadenfreude, but she was right about the death panels. So right, in fact, that the death panels are receiving some very special and probably unconstitutional protection in the Senate health care bill.

The creation of the so-called Independent Payment Advisory Board – the panel that decides who goes without coverage so costs can be cut – cannot be repealed, according to language Harry Reid has inserted into the bill, without a supermajority vote of two-thirds.

[...]

What Palin said all along was that government-run health care, especially established on the notion that it could somehow cut costs, would inevitably lead to rationing. And she was confident an administration in love with the idea of “experts” designing “systems” would put together some sort of panel to decide how to ration the coverage.

Enter the Independent Payment Advisory Board, so important that Harry Reid seeks to protect its existence forever by requiring a two-thirds supermajority to ever kill it.

The radical liberals in control of the federal government are doing all they can to make this a very scary Christmas and a bankrupt new year. Read the unabridged original Dan Calabrese post here.

- JP